Guidelines for House Gecko
Leave pearl eggs in dark spots—
behind sockets or bookshelves.
Crawl the walls on sticky toes, but if you see people,
scuttle to a crack and hide.
Squeak for help. Chirp for sex.
Eat bugs and multiply.
Let the little ones dash across carpets
but only at night.
You’ll last for years here, hovering
in the laundry room, waiting for roaches
but even if a fleshy hand catches you and drops you
in the grass, don’t panic.
Remember, your name is House.
You know where all the secret passages are.
About the Author: Sarah Carleton writes poetry, edits fiction, plays the banjo, and knits obsessively in Tampa, Florida. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Nimrod, Tar River Poetry, Cider Press Review, The Wild Word, Valparaiso, As It Ought to Be, and New Ohio Review. Sarah’s poems have received nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her first collection, Notes from the Girl Cave, was published in 2020 by Kelsay Books.
Image Credit: Illustration originally from Histoire naturelle de Lacépède. Paris: Furne, Jouvet et cie. Public domain image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Found Boy
Warm night wind, jukebox echoes,
a long slow undertongue afterburn
of pipe smoke and Tullamore Dew –
but there's no second star to be seen,
only this thin high overcast and a
streetlight gleam off a left-hand ring,
so it's a right turn onto my street,
straight on to a slip-in-quietly bed,
a cubicle too early in the morning.
About the Author: Steve Brisendine lives, works and wrestles with words in Mission, Kansas. His most recent poetry collections are Salt Holds No Secret But This (Spartan Press, 2022) and To Dance with Cassiopeia and Die (Alien Buddha Press, 2022), a “split collaboration” with his former pen name of Stephen Clay Dearborn. His first collection, The Words We Do Not Have (Spartan Press, 2021) was nominated for the Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award. He is a two-time finalist for the Derick Burleson Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in Flint Hills Review, Modern Haiku, Connecticut River Review and elsewhere.
Image Credit:Louis Lozowick “City Shapes” (1922) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
the only other thing is nothing
(for will hackney)
got your postcard
from the edge of civilization
in a resort town where
water stopped like time
in the shimmer of 118 degrees
out where the sea level still
can't find the sea
california has eluded me
I haven't seen the salton sea
but I miss zabriske point
I miss armed attendants
pumping expensive gas
under blazing mojave sun
desert rats aware
apocalypse already flashed
the last time we shared a desert
you were celebrating life beginning
as speeches and dances rolled
I was in the parking lot
cold moon rises full
over the sierra blanca
attempts to be a dutiful
if long distanced partner
lonely in the clash
between living with abandon
and living abandoned
I am yucca, sun bleached
blossoms mummified
while she's hostile
brandishing the shovel
that would bury us
come morning
I start east
my eyes on lubbock
beyond roswell
I spy a pecan grove
symmetrical oasis
stretched miles under
unforgiving sun
park between rows
stand outside myself
the only other thing is nothing
About the Author: Jason Baldinger was recently told he looks like a cross between a lumberjack and a genie. He’s also been told he’s not from Pittsburgh but is the physical manifestation of Pittsburgh. Although unsure of either, he does love wandering the country writing poems. He’s penned fifteen books of poetry the newest of which include: The Afterlife is a Hangover (Stubborn Mule Press) and A History of Backroads Misplaced: Selected Poems 2010-2020 (Kung Fu Treachery), and This Still Life with James Benger. His work has appeared across a wide variety of print journals and online. You can hear him read his work on Bandcamp and on lps by The Gotobeds and Theremonster.
Image Credit: Arthur Rothstein “Type of land on project at Las Cruces, New Mexico. Note large yuccas” (1936) Public Domain photo courtesy of the Library of Congress
About the Author: Kathleen Hellen’s collection Meet Me at the Bottom is forthcoming from Main Street Rag. Her credits include The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, her award-winning collection Umberto’s Night, published by Washington Writers’ Publishing House, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, her work has appeared in Arts & Letters, The Carolina Quarterly, Cimarron Review. Colorado Review,Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Nimrod, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, The Sewanee Review, Southern Humanities Review, Subtropics, The Sycamore Review, Tampa Review Online, West Branch, and Witness, among others. Hellen’s awards include the Thomas Merton poetry prize and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review, as well as individual artist awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts.
your fear becomes holy,
your marriage frail. you decide mine will ruin yours.
your sentences pervert scripture. plagiarize what
you believe is real. what you claim to conjure
you want god to believe. if no one else loves you
why should he?
your fear becomes holy, 2amen. let me turn your heads:
jesus never married, had disciples: men.
judas turned against him. jealousy
comes from the bed. if i can’t have you
no one can.
These two poems appear in John Compton’s new book the castration of a minor god, available from Ghost City Press
“the castration of a minor god” is built like a classic opera, composed of many lyric passages full of strange and powerful images cast in words, where dresses of flames mix horrifically with our culture’s dishonesty and secret perversion to cast a searchlight onto earth from the heavens above where this thing called god tells us to love one another, fully, completely, without exception. Compton’s short book of poems answers the implicit and explicit questions that other Book poses. Without apology or fear, anger is met with anger, love with love. While sometimes his metaphors go too far, other times the images created are perfectly beautiful and compelling. This is a book that embraces what was forbidden love and shows the reader the universality of fear, desire, and belonging.
-Fred Dodsworth, Dodsworth Books
About the Author: john compton (b. 1987) is a gay poet who lives in Kentucky. He lives in a tiny town with his husband Josh and their dogs and cats.
Image Credit:Ernst Ludwig Kirchner “Head of Dr. Bauer” (1921) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee.
For Mom
The brother who gave me a kidney
for my transplant sent me an email
telling me not to wear my filthy
Yankee cap to mom’s funeral
out of respect for my mother.
Mom knew how I felt and we grew
closer while I helped take care
of her the nine months before
she died. Besides, she’d hardly
notice lying in her closed casket
and if she did, she’d laugh, shake
her head and pull me in with her
for a hug, ask if Judge homered
in last night’s west coast game
against the Angels. Jaime was a baby
when Dad wanted to kick me out
of the house for hair hanging past
my shoulders and mom kept yelling,
over my dead body, until the next door
neighbors, the ones my other brother
named The Gruesome’s to rhyme
with Newsome, threatened to call
the cops and Dad told them to mind
their own friggin’ business and forgot
all about my hair, me. Jaime never
could guess how much it meant
that mom kept asking about my writing,
the only one in the family who read
my poems and never asked why
I wrote that or told me not to write
this, sometimes reminding me
she was the one who taught me
to read, leaning into her arms,
my leg in its brace, laid flat across
the couch when I couldn’t go
out and play with the other kids
who sometimes called me names,
her finger underlining letters,
pointing out words, making me
repeat sounds, and though she only
met Jesse, the severely autistic son
of the woman I briefly lived with
three, four, times at holiday dinners,
she always wanted to know everything
about him, delighted to hear he spent
his weekend skiing or climbing on every
roller coaster, every whirling scary ride
at the summer fair, not like you Anthony,
laughing again when I nodded yeah,
Jesse still loves ripping books into piles
of thin paper slices, orders chicken fingers,
French fries extra hot any time we eat out,
and then she made me promise to take
care of that kid, now a man, good.
About the Author: Tony Gloeggler is a life-long resident of NYC and managed group homes for the mentally challenged for over 40 years. His work has appeared in Rattle, New Ohio Review, Book Of Matches, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy. His most recent book, What Kind Of Man with NYQ Books, was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize and long listed for Jacar Press’ Julie Suk Award.
Image Credit:Édouard Vuillard “The Artist’s Mother Opening a Door” (1886) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee.
The Bones Know
Mama orders beef shank for soup.
I shuffle small feet on the butcher’s sawdust floor,
wishing for that elusive marbled steak.
Gramma Erzebet and I chop carrots and celery
then quarter the parsnips and turnips.
Dolgozz tovább, Zsuzsu.
Keep working, Suzie.
We watch the flesh bubble from the bones
in her cast iron pot and know
we will have supper for days.
Later, the cats lick slick grey bones
tossed on the yellow and green linoleum.
Come May, Mama and I plant pink impatiens by the porch.
Knees pressed into the newly warm earth,
we discover discarded bones of slain birds and mice.
My bones remember every place I go.
Each taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound,
every memory buried in spongy marrow.
About the Author: Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).
Image Credit:François Bonvin “Still Life” (1858) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
At 45
i have no time for rebellion
so i’ll take what comes easily
the sun hanging
over brown grass
like a clenched fist
a broken wine glass
in the sink since february
selling a better story
than any of us
can afford
a wolf spider climbing
a broken down amazon box
like sir edmund hillary
atop some snow covered peak
of desolation & boredom
worn out vinyl
recorded as rain fell on seattle
like the blood of the roman dead
in another lifetime
of raised voices & passionate song
where for a few seconds
we all get to feel young again.
About the Author: John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw’s Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Poetry, 2017),Your Daughter’s Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019), Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), Afterlife Karaoke (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2021) and Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022).. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize. He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.
Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Cactus Patch in Joshua Tree” (2021)
About the Author: Mike James makes his home outside Nashville, Tennessee. He has published in numerous magazines, large and small, throughout the country. His poetry collections include: Leftover Distances (Luchador), Parades (Alien Buddha), Jumping Drawbridges in Technicolor (Blue Horse), and Crows in the Jukebox (Bottom Dog.) In April, Red Hawk published his 20th collection, Portable Light: Poems 1991-2021.
A Year Turned Upside Down
Almost all of fall evaporated
in a flurry of sun. Mayweed’s stars
immobilized by an embarrassment of heat.
Come January, gardenias shot into scent,
clivia burst into a conflagration
of orange. With winter annihilated,
spring spiraled into the disingenuous
sugar of summer, sage withered,
chaparral seethed in a flash of flame.
About the Author: Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in North American Review, Nimrod, Rattle, Slant, American Journal of Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. She likes the light on November afternoons, the music of Stravinsky, the smell of the ocean. She hates pretense, fundamentalism and sauerkraut.
As It Ought To Be 